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The capture overlay

Press your capture key and the app takes over every screen you have. This is the capture overlay. It is where you choose what to capture and what kind of capture to make, and it is the only screen the app shows before it hands you a result.

Nothing is captured until you say so. Closing the overlay leaves nothing behind.

The toolbar

One floating toolbar appears per screen. From left to right it holds:

  1. What kind of capture: Scanner, Photo or Video.
  2. The delay chip, which sets a countdown.
  3. Microphone and system audio, shown only when Video is selected.
  4. What to capture: Region, Window or Monitor.
  5. Settings, which opens the settings window.
  6. Close, which quits the tool.

You can drag the toolbar anywhere on the screen. Buttons still work while you drag, and the position is remembered per screen, so moving one screen's toolbar never moves another's. The toolbar keeps the position you gave it through the countdown and through a recording.

The toolbar tucks itself just outside your selection and follows it as you resize and move. With no selection it sits at the bottom centre of each screen. When it ends up beside a region rather than above or below it, the buttons stack into a column. It hides itself completely while you are actively drawing, resizing or moving a region, so it never sits on top of the thing you are framing.

Two choices, not one

Every capture is two independent choices, and the toolbar keeps them in separate groups:

  • The kind: a photo, a video, or a scan.
  • The mode: a region, a window, or a monitor.

They combine freely. A region video, a monitor photo, and so on. The one exception is the scanner, which always works on a region, so choosing Scanner puts you in region mode and hides the mode buttons.

Taking the shot

The mode buttons double as the shutter. This is the part worth learning first:

  • Press a mode button that is not currently selected and it just switches mode.
  • Press the Region button when region mode is already selected, and it captures the region you have drawn.
  • Press the Monitor button when monitor mode is already selected, and it captures the screen that toolbar is sitting on.
  • In Window mode you capture by clicking the window you want. The Window button itself does nothing once it is selected. It grows a thin ring instead, to say it is waiting for you.

The two buttons whose second press takes the shot swap their icon for a check mark and fill with your accent colour, so you can always see which press is the one that fires.

While you are choosing

Two things on screen are worth knowing about.

Your pointer may be drawn for you. In region or monitor mode, when the app is set to keep the mouse cursor and no delay or freeze is in play, the overlay draws your pointer where it was at the instant you pressed your capture key, so you can frame around it.

Every other screen invites you in. In region mode, any screen that does not currently hold your region shows a pill reading "Begin drawing a capture region". You can press straight through it to start a region on that screen.

Where to go next